HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS (JUNE 15, 2010)

17th-century intellectuals discovered their idealized self-image in the Adam who investigated, named, and commanded the creatures in Eden. Reinvented as the agent of innocent curiosity, Adam was central to the project of redefining contemplation as a productive, public labor. Picciotto argues that practical efforts to restore paradise generated the modern concept of objectivity and remade the author as an agent of estranged, "innocent" perception.